Toward an understanding of collective intellectual humility

Krumrei-Mancuso, E. J., et al. (2024).

Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2024.09.006

Abstract

The study of intellectual humility (IH), which is gaining increasing interest among cognitive scientists, has been dominated by a focus on individuals. We propose that IH operates at the collective level as the tendency of a collective’s members to attend to each other’s intellectual limitations and the limitations of their collective cognitive efforts. Given people’s propensity to better recognize others’ limitations than their own, IH may be more readily achievable in collectives than individuals. We describe the socio-cognitive dynamics that can interfere with collective IH and offer the solution of building intellectually humbling environments that create a culture of IH that can outlast the given membership of a collective. We conclude with promising research directions.

Highlights

• Like individuals, collectives can possess intellectual humility.
• A collective’s intellectual humility is not strictly reducible to the sum of the intellectual humility of its members.
• Collective intellectual humility is the tendency of members of a collective to attend to one another’s intellectual limitations and the intellectual limitations of their collective cognitive efforts.
• Given people’s propensity to better recognize others’ limitations than their own, intellectual humility may be more achievable in collectives than in individuals.
• Social support and institutional scaffolding are crucial to promoting collective intellectual humility.

Here are some thoughts:

The research on collective intellectual humility (IH) offers valuable insights for practicing psychologists, particularly in group settings. Psychologists can focus on fostering environments that encourage collective IH by cultivating diverse perspectives within teams, establishing norms that value open criticism, transparency, and accountability, and facilitating inclusive discussions where all members feel comfortable sharing their views.

Creating intellectually humbling environments is another critical area where psychologists can contribute. This involves scaffolding critical thinking by introducing tools and frameworks that prompt groups to consider alternative viewpoints and potential weaknesses in their reasoning. Additionally, developing reward systems that recognize and reinforce intellectually humble behaviors within the group can further promote a culture of humility.

Why Scientific Fraud Is Suddenly Everywhere

Kevin T. Dugan

New York Magazine

Originally posted 21 May 24

Junk science has been forcing a reckoning among scientific and medical researchers for the past year, leading to thousands of retracted papers. Last year, Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned amid reporting that some of his most high-profile work on Alzheimer’s disease was at best inaccurate. (A probe commissioned by the university’s board of trustees later exonerated him of manipulating the data).

But the problems around credible science appear to be getting worse. Last week, scientific publisher Wiley decided to shutter 19 scientific journals after retracting 11,300 sham papers. There is a large-scale industry of so-called “paper mills” that sell fictive research, sometimes written by artificial intelligence, to researchers who then publish it in peer-reviewed journals — which are sometimes edited by people who had been placed by those sham groups. Among the institutions exposing such practices is Retraction Watch, a 14-year-old organization co-founded by journalists Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus. I spoke with Oransky about why there has been a surge in fake research and whether fraud accusations against the presidents of Harvard and Stanford are actually good for academia.

I’ll start by saying that paper mills are not the problem; they are a symptom of the actual problem. Adam Marcus, my co-founder, had broken a really big and frightening story about a painkiller involving scientific fraud, which led to dozens of retractions. That’s what got us interested in that. There were all these retractions, far more than we thought but far fewer than there are now. Now, they’re hiding in plain sight.

The info is here.

Here are some thoughts:

Recent headlines might suggest a surge in scientific misconduct. However, it's more likely that increased awareness and stricter scrutiny are uncovering existing issues. From an ethical standpoint, the pressure to publish groundbreaking research can create a challenging environment. Publication pressure, coupled with the human tendency towards confirmation bias, can incentivize researchers to take unethical shortcuts that align data with their hypotheses. This can have a ripple effect, potentially undermining the entire scientific process.

Fortunately, the heightened focus on research integrity presents an opportunity for positive change. Initiatives promoting open science practices, such as data sharing and robust replication studies, can foster greater transparency. Furthermore, cultivating a culture that rewards ethical research conduct and whistleblowing, even in the absence of earth-shattering results, is crucial.  Science thrives on self-correction. By acknowledging these challenges and implementing solutions, the scientific community can safeguard the integrity of research and ensure continued progress.

The prejudices of expert evidence

Chin, J., Cullen, H. J., & Clarke, B. 

(2022, February 14).

https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/nxcvy

Abstract

The rules and procedures regulating the admission of potentially unreliable expert evidence have been substantially weakened over the past several years. We respond to this trend by focusing on one aspect of the rules that has not been explicitly curtailed: unfair prejudice. Unfair prejudice is an important component of trial judges’ authority to exclude evidence, which they may do when that unfair prejudice outweighs the evidence’s probative value. We develop the concept of unfair prejudice by first examining how it has been interpreted by judges and then relating that to the relevant social scientific research on the characteristics of expertise that can make it prejudicial. In doing so, we also discuss the research behind a common reason that judges admit expert evidence despite its prejudice, which is that judicial directions help jurors understand and weigh it. As a result, this article provides two main contributions. First, it advances knowledge about unfair prejudice, which is an important part of expert evidence law that has received relatively little attention from legal researchers. Second, it provides guidance to practitioners for challenging expert evidence under one of the few avenues left to do so.

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What should courts do about the prejudices of expert evidence?

While we recognise that balancing probative value with unfair prejudice is fact-specific and contextual, the analysis above suggests considerable room for improvement in how courts assess putatively prejudicial expert evidence. Specifically, the research we reviewed indicates that courts do not fully appreciate the degree to which laypeople may overestimate the reliability of scientific claims. But, more than that, the judicial approach has been myopically focused on the CSI Effect (and in at least one case, significantly misconstrued it), rather than other well-researched expert evidence stereotypes and misconceptions. Accordingly, we recommend that judges apply the discretions to exclude evidence in sections 135 and 137 of the UEL in a way that is more sensitive to empirical research. For example, courts should recognise that experts, or counsel that emphasise the expert’s status and years of experience, also feed into that evidence’s prejudicial potential. Moreover, technical jargon and the general complexity of the evidence can serve to heighten that prejudice, such that these features of expert evidence may build upon each other in a way that is more than additive.

The expert evidence jurisprudence is even more insensitive to research on the factors that make evidence difficult or impossible to test. For example, we struggled (as others have) to find decisions acknowledging that unconscious cognitive processes and associated biases invite prejudice because the unconscious is difficult to cross-examine. Moreover, the closest decision we could find acknowledging adversarial imbalance as a limit on adversarial testing was a US decision in obiter.  And troublingly, courts sometimes simply mistake previously admitted evidence with evidence that has been adversarially tested. With evidence that defies testing, the first step for courts is to acknowledge this research on prejudice and incorporate it into the exclusionary calculus in sections 135 and 137. The next step, as we will see in the following part, is to use this knowledge to better understand the limitations of judicial directions aimed at mitigating prejudice – and perhaps craft better directions in the future. 

The info is here.